The thinking behind this blog is really simple: The guilty should be prevented from reoffending and the innocent should not be convicted -- not very complex but often not achieved.

The spotlight is also thrown on feral law enforcement

Thursday, May 26, 2011

New DNA tests may clear Chicago 4 in woman's murder

Evidence links case to convicted killer, lawyers say

New DNA evidence implicates a convicted killer in a rape and murder that sent four teenagers to prison for lengthy sentences in the 1990s.

The four were convicted of the murder and rape of Nina Glover, 30, largely on the basis of confessions they made to police and prosecutors, even though primitive DNA testing at the time excluded them as the source of semen evidence. But new testing links Johnny Douglas to Glover's rape and murder, according to court papers filed this week in Cook County Circuit Court.

Before his own violent death, Douglas was charged with the murders of two other women after Glover's homicide; he was convicted of one and acquitted of the other. And Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors suspected him in other murders as well and questioned him in several sexual assaults, though he was never charged in those, according to attorneys.

The developments in the case bear striking similarities to another wending its way through Cook County's criminal justice system. Five teenagers were convicted of the 1991 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Dixmoor after several of them confessed. But recent DNA testing has connected a convicted rapist to the crime.

The state's attorney's office declined to discuss the DNA match to Douglas, but the office has been skeptical of the new DNA evidence in both the Glover and Dixmoor murders.

The Tribune wrote in March about the quest by Terrill Swift, one of the four convicted in Glover's murder, to prove his innocence by seeking new DNA testing even after he had served 15 years for the homicide and been released from prison. Co-defendant Michael Saunders, who remains in prison, joined in the effort.

In a court filing Monday, their lawyers revealed that the new DNA testing connected Douglas to Glover's murder and rape in 1994, not their clients.

Douglas had pleaded guilty to the 1997 murder of one woman, Gytonne Marsh, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In 2002, a jury acquitted Douglas of the murder of Elaine Martin, even though DNA linked him to the crime. Martin's body had been discovered near a church altar in 1995.

Douglas himself was shot to death in 2008 at age 46. His accused killer claimed self-defense and was acquitted at trial.

In their request for DNA testing last year, attorneys for Swift and Saunders had theorized that Glover's murder was the work of one of a number of serial killers who targeted women — mostly prostitutes and drug users — on the South Side in the 1980s and 1990s. Like many of those victims, Glover was beaten and strangled and her body dumped in a trash bin.

Two attorneys who worked on cases connected to Douglas both said Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors suspected Douglas in other murders as well and questioned him in several sex assaults. But he was never charged in those.

Lisa Brean, an assistant Cook County public defender who defended the man who fatally shot Douglas, said police told her that Douglas was suspected of being a serial killer and that police reports detailed the murders and rapes he was suspected of committing.

"One of the detectives said, 'Your client ought to get a medal because this guy's killed more women than we know,'" recalled Brean, who won the acquittal earlier this year. "They thought he was one of the worst."

Amy Thompson, an assistant public defender who won Douglas' acquittal in 2002, said she heard similar allegations. "I know they considered him a suspect in a lot of the cases that had to do with the prostitutes at that time," she said.

While declining to get into specifics, a spokeswoman for State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said the office "has just recently received new information" in Glover's murder case — an apparent reference to the DNA match to Douglas.

"We are beginning the process of reviewing this information as this case moves forward," said Sally Daly, the spokeswoman.

Prosecutors initially opposed the new round of DNA testing, as well as entering the results in a national law enforcement databank to check for matches. Alvarez dropped the opposition after inquiries from the Tribune, but the office downplayed the importance of any DNA match, saying in court papers it would be a "red herring."

In the Dixmoor case, prosecutors said in court recently that the DNA match to a convicted rapist was not new evidence. At trial, all five defendants were excluded by the primitive DNA testing available at the time, though there was no connection to another possible suspect as there is now. That man is in Cook County Jail on unrelated drug charges.

Joshua Tepfer, a lawyer at Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth who is representing Swift, said the DNA link to Douglas is crucial. Police and prosecutors would have investigated Douglas if they had known of the link early on, he said.

Tepfer and lawyers for Swift's co-defendants Monday filed a motion seeking to throw out their convictions.

"We believe this is entirely exonerating and this man who has been tied to so many other cases is the one who alone committed this crime," Tepfer said. "The DNA doesn't lie in this case. … He's a man who was preying on women."

In addition, Tepfer said, no physical evidence tied the teenagers to Glover's murder, just the confessions. And those, he said, were marked by inconsistencies.

Although Swift had been working since his release from prison last year, he recently violated parole after he allegedly went to a fast-food restaurant and two stores instead of going straight home from work, according to parole documents. He was returned to prison.

Lt. Tom Keane, the commander of the Chicago police cold-case squad, said that even with the new DNA evidence, Douglas' death made reaching a conclusion in Glover's murder difficult because Douglas might have claimed he had consensual sex with Glover. Douglas, according to Thompson, made that claim in the Martin murder and was acquitted despite DNA evidence.

"The DNA in and of itself does not clear the case," said Keane, though he acknowledged that the crimes linked to Douglas were of the era and bore "a ton of similarities" to the serial killings on the South Side. "If this guy's dead and so he can't tell you, 'Yeah, I killed her,' it doesn't mean on its own John Douglas killed Nina Glover. You need more than just DNA."

But Peter Neufeld, an attorney with the Innocence Project in New York who represents Saunders, said the DNA from Douglas, particularly considering his criminal history, is more powerful than the confessions of Swift, Saunders and the other youths. None of them mentioned Douglas, who was considerably older than the teens, he said.

"To make the argument that it was consensual, you have to suggest that (Douglas) has the bad luck that right after he has consensual sex with a prostitute, she dies and that it's happened more than once," Neufeld said.

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Dedication

In memory of Fatty Arbuckle, a good and innocent man whose movie career as a comedian was ruined by an opportunistic prosecution. The woman he was accused of murdering almost certainly died of natural causes. He was eventually cleared but the damage was done.

A thought

I love the Mae West story where some judge wearing a robe during the middle of the day, and seated in a high chair peered down and asked her, 'Are you showing contempt for my court?' To which she replied, 'I’m doing my best not to show it, your honor.' Maybe we need to give up trying to not show it."